Two Sides Of The Same Coin - Tails
by Scription Addict
Summary: Boyd tells Grace why his past will always dictate his future. Related to Two sides of the same coin - Heads, but not a follow on.


**Two Sides Of The Same Coin – Tails**

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**Boyd explains to Grace why his past will always dictate his future. Based around the argument in the episode Double Bind, (Series 6), only with my slant on the said argument.**

**Relates to the previous story two sides of the same coin - Heads, although stories are not connected, read it and it'll make sense, I hope. **

**Dedicated to waking the dead fans everywhere, especially Boyd/Grace shippers.  
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**Disclaimer - I own nothing.**

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The minute his senses return his expression changes, he looks away from her, unable to meet her gaze. She wants him to lean down and delicately kiss her, longs for him to pull her to him and hold her, but it doesn't happen. His look is one of shame and disgust a look that speaks volumes. They had shared something intimate, an act that brought them, physically, as close as two people could be. An act that she had hoped would bring them emotionally closer than they had ever been. But it isn't to be, they are both still breathless when he disentangles himself from her and sits up, and whilst her heart is still racing from the physical exertion, it also begins to break as he starts to redress. With his shirt and shoes in hand he moves to the door without saying a word, she waits with baited breath when he pauses, almost sure he will turn around, or at least say something, but her hopes are dashed when he opens the door and walks out. She curls up on her side and pulls her clothes around herself, and as the front door closes she releases a gentle sob, before chastising herself for being weak, she closes her eyes and tries to ignore the pain she's feeling, just as she tries to ignore the tears that fall silently from her eyes.

**The Following day.**

It's been brewing all day, she knows she has to say something, but she's waited, biding her time until everyone else has left for the evening. She looks up to see him looking directly at her, but he immediately looks away the moment she sees him, and she knows it's now or never. She doesn't knock on the door, she has no intention of giving him the chance to say he's too busy to talk, or grab his phone and pretend to be in the middle of a call.

He looks up when the door opens. "Grace? Have you forgotten how to knock?" He asks sarcastically.

"We need to talk."

"I'm busy." He responds.

"Tough, make time." She barks back at him.

"I'll pencil you in the diary for some time next week, now if you'll excuse me." He attempts to pick up his phone but she puts her hand over his and forces the receiver back down again.

"Now!"

He sighs, "fine, have it your way, what would you like to talk about?"

"Yesterday."

"What about it?" She gives him an exasperated look, leaving him in no doubt that she means business. "Oh you want to talk about the fumble on your sofa." He replies with an arrogant smile.

"Is that how you see it?"

"Yes. Isn't it how you see it?"

"No."

"Oh get over it Grace, it was a stupid mistake."

"You think it was a mistake?"

"Yes it was a mistake, I shagged a woman I work with, you weren't the first and you probably won't be the last, now if you'll excuse me, I'm busy."

"You arrogant bastard."

"You asked me to fuck you Grace, I merely obliged."

"Thanks for that, anything else you want to throw in my face whilst you're about it."

"Just stating a fact."

"Oh you want facts do you, well then yes, in the privacy of my own home, during a very passionate embrace with a man I care about, and who I thought cared about me, I thought it might be mildly erotic to whisper the words fuck me into his ear. I never expected to be defending those words to the man I uttered them to."

"Well what did you expect, flowers and chocolates? News flash Grace, I'm not interested."

"I used to think they were wrong."

"Who?"

"The people who said you were a heartless bastard with the morals of an alley cat, the people who said you weren't capable of having a relationship, so you slept with anything that took your fancy."

"Yeah well maybe they're right."

"I don't think there is any doubt about that." She's infuriated and he can see it. "And to think I thought we had something special."

"Well for what it's worth Grace, it was a special half an hour."

"Don't flatter yourself Boyd, it was closer to ten minutes, and it certainly wasn't special for me."

"Ouch! I guess I deserve that."

"You deserve a lot more than that."

"Really? Well as I said I'm busy, so maybe you would be so kind as to throw you're tantrum elsewhere."

"Tantrum?"

"Yes bloody tantrum, you're a grown up Grace, shit happens so just bloody deal with it."

"I'm sick of dealing with it, we're all sick of dealing with it, sick of dealing with you and you're bloody problems."

"This isn't about my problems, it's about me rejecting you."

"You're not rejecting me, I don't want you, nobody wants you, you're ill. You're repressed, depressed and in denial, that's why you're alone! You're isolated, and unloved, how does that feel?" She doesn't wait for an answer, she turns quickly and walks away, slamming his door as she leaves.

The sound of the door slamming seems to go unnoticed by Boyd as he sits and stares into space, her words going round and round in his head, he thought he was resistant to the kind of insults thrown at him on a daily basis, but her words have wounded him. They've wounded him because she's right, he is all of those things and more, he is unloved and alone, and he's that way because he chooses to be. He pushes away every woman that gets even remotely close to him, too ashamed of turning back into the man he once was. He keeps his past a well hidden secret, afraid of his friends looking at him the way he once looked at himself, but even worse than that, he's afraid, afraid he will hurt someone. Afraid he will hurt her, he knows how he feels about her, how much he craves the feel of her skin against his, her touch, her smell, her beauty, he craves it all, every minute of every day, and the antics of the previous day have only intensified those feelings. He won't admit it though, instead he'll push her away, keeps her at arm's length, because it's easier than the thought that he might hurt her like he knew he could, like he was sure he would.

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At home she sighs deeply as she stands in the kitchen of her home and waits for the kettle to boil, she rubs her hand over her forehead, her head is spinning, the words they'd shouted at each other going round and round. She wonders if she's gone too far, whether she's over stepped the mark, her head's saying he deserved it, that he needs to hear the truth, but her heart's saying that he didn't deserve the spiteful, hurtful words she'd spat at him in anger. The words were true, of that she was sure, but the words had really hurt him, she could see it in his face, in his eyes. She isn't sure if he deserved that, she isn't sure anyone deserves that, least of all him. He's a good man, a caring man, but she has no idea why he constantly chooses to push her away.

She's contemplating her future, a future that she thought included him, when the loud knock at the door brings her back to reality. She's pretty sure she knows who it is, she didn't for a minute think he'd turn up at her door step, but there he is, as large as life, and despite his earlier behavior her heart betrays her and does a little flip at the sight of him.

Her heart may have betrayed her, but her voice doesn't, she doesn't shout and scream, but it isn't the usual soft hello that he's become accustomed to. "What do you want?" She asks abruptly.

His response is sheepish. "To talk."

"I think we've both said more than enough already, don't you?"

"I acted like a prick, and I deserved everything you said." She opens the door and motions for him to come in, as he walks into the lounge he stares at the sofa, yesterday's romp still fresh in his mind, a stupid moment of madness that has changed their relationship forever. He turns to face her. "I'm sorry." He says meekly.

"For what exactly? Shagging me on my sofa? For walking out on me before I'd even got my breath back? For making me feel like a cheap tart? Or for showing me your true colours?"

He looks ashamed. "For everything, for the way I treated you, the way I behaved after we…."

"Fucked?" She jumps in.

He grimaces as she reminds him of his earlier remark. "I'm not the man you think I am Grace."

"Oh you can say that again." She replies with sarcasm.

"No, what I mean is, the things I said, the way I behaved, it's not me, that's not who I am."

"Well at the time it looked very much like who you were."

"It was never meant to happen."

"What?"

"You and me, yesterday, it should never have happened."

"You've made that abundantly clear."

"I don't mean because I didn't want to, I mean because….For fucks sake!"

"Are you saying you did want to?"

"No! Yes! Oh shit, I'm fucking this right up. Maybe I should just go."

"Do you want a glass of wine?"

He looks at the floor before nodding his head. "I need to explain things Grace."

"Okay, I'm listening."

"It's not easy, I've never talked about it before."

"Talked about what?"

"What I need to talk about."

"Boyd, I know you're a very complex man, but this is bloody ridiculous, even for you."

He sighs loudly and tries to continue. "It all happened a long time ago."

"Is there any chance of you making sense any time soon?"

"I'm sorry, just give me a chance to explain. Please?"

Grace held up her hands in surrender. "Fine, carry on."

"It was a long time ago, I know that, but if I don't start at the beginning then it won't make sense. I loved her Grace, I always loved her, maybe I loved her too much, I don't know?"

"Who?" she asked, causing him to roll his eyes at her interruption. "Sorry, I forgot." She replies, sarcastically placing her finger on her lips like a child.

"I'm talking about my wife, Mary. We were just kids when we met, did you know that?" She shook her head in response, but said nothing, to which he just smiled. "I was seventeen and she was fifteen, she was a real looker and I fell for her big time. We were both still at school, I was doing my a-levels, even then I knew what I was going to do with my life, Hendon was already in my sights. My parents wanted me to go to university, study law and become a barrister like my Father, but I knew it wasn't for me."

"All the time I've known you and I never knew your father was a barrister."

"I don't talk about him much, I disappointed them, my parents I mean. I let them down."

"How?"

"I was a bit of a jack the lad, I thought I knew everything, had all the answers, but all I did was make one mistake after another, and it left my parents at their wits end. They hated me joining the force, but I think they were just glad I did something with my life, they made no secret of how disappointed they were."

"But you're a detective superintendent, how could that disappoint anyone?"

"I'm a DSI now, but when I joined up I was just another beat bobby."

"So what happened with Mary?"

"In some ways she was my polar opposite, she had no ambition, she worked in a little delicatessen on Saturdays, it gave her a few quid in her pocket and that was all she really cared about. I think she'd have been happy to do that forever more if she could have. But in other ways we were so alike, we liked the same things, music, art, books, we seemed so well matched and we would spend hours together, talking and laughing, just enjoying being together. "

"It sounds very idyllic, but it obviously didn't last."

"No it didn't last."

"What went wrong?"

"Everything went wrong, spectacularly wrong in fact, in a very short space of time. We were young, too bloody young, and like me, she thought she knew it all, but we were children playing at being grown-ups. We weren't just alike in good ways, we shared other…not so good similarities. We were both very passionate and hot headed, it very quickly turned from a teenage romance into a very real and very volatile love affair, and I guess that's when things started to go wrong."

"I see."

"No, I don't think you do." She looked at him quizzically. "We were stupid and careless and she ended up pregnant at fifteen."

"Bloody hell!"

"Yeah, bloody hell. Now perhaps you can see why I disappointed my parents so much, I was seventeen years old and I'd managed to get my fifteen year old girlfriend pregnant, it wasn't my greatest moment. These days it's an everyday occurrence and no one gives a shit, but back then her parents were talking statutory rape and all sorts. Thankfully my father managed to convince them that it was in no one's interest to go to the police. I agreed to do the right thing as soon as she turned sixteen, we agreed that I'd leave school and get a job and all thoughts of Hendon went out the window."

"I never realised you'd had Luke so young."

"We didn't, it wasn't Luke. As I said before, our relationship was very fiery, from very early on we had these explosive arguments, she had a hell of a temper, so much so that sometimes I thought she'd explode with rage, and I was just as bad, we would shout and scream at each other. During one of these arguments, when she was three months gone, she collapsed holding her stomach, I got her to hospital, but it was too late, she lost the baby." He looks at Grace, who is by now sat in a stunned silence. "I think most people would have seen it as a lucky escape, taken the opportunity to make a fresh start, but we didn't take the hint, we were in love, or we thought we were."

"You stayed together."

"Yeah, we stayed together. I managed to stay at school, finish my A-levels and get into Hendon, I think that was about the only decent thing I did in my life."

"You've done a lot of good things Boyd."

"I've done a lot of bad things too."

"You were young and careless, it doesn't make you a bad person."

"It gets worse, it gets a lot worse. By the time I passed out of Hendon we were married and she was six months pregnant."

"Luke?"

"Yeah Luke. I think we thought it was normal you know? House, car, kids, it's the way it's meant to be, but we were still young, I was trying to establish a career, and we still fought like cat and dog."

Grace held the wine bottle up and he nodded his head for her to pour him another glass. "Boyd, I'm really glad you feel you can share this with me, but I don't understand why?"

"Because I need you to understand why it happened."

"Are you still talking about yesterday?"

"No, I'm talking about something that happened a long time ago, something that has defined everything in my life ever since."

"But you still haven't told me what that something is."

"After Luke was born things changed, and not for the better." He stared at the drink in his hand. "She seemed to want to push me as far as she could you know? She started arguments over the slightest little thing, I felt constantly on edge, like I was treading on bloody egg shells all the time. She was always very aggressive, even when we were making love she would bite just that little bit harder, scratch just that little bit deeper, so it wasn't a huge surprise the first time she went for me physically during an argument."

"Are you trying to tell me she was abusive?"

"No, at least not in a sense that you're thinking. She would slap, scratch and shove, but it was more about her getting a response from me, than her wanting to hurt me. I was more than capable of restraining her if it got out of hand, but she'd just keep going and then one day it happened."

"What?"

"I'm not proud of it, and I've never told a single person, until now. I hit her." His words hung in the air, and neither of them spoke for a few moments.

"Because you were trying to calm her down? Or something else?"

"I snapped Grace, I became the worst kind of man imaginable."

"I can't say I'm not shocked Boyd, and I am in no way defending your actions, but it does sound like you were pushed to the very limit, and it in no way turns you into some crazed wife beater."

"I gave my wife a black eye and I have never felt so disgusted and ashamed in all my life, but it gets worse, it wasn't an isolated incident."

"I see."

"Do you? We were as bad as each other Grace, but nothing she did could ever excuse the way I behaved, it happened twice more before I realised what I was becoming, I despised myself, I looked in the mirror and didn't even recognise myself. It scared me enough to bring me to my senses."

"Did you get help?"

"Not then, but I did what I thought was best, I packed my bags and walked out. I think things would have got worse if I hadn't. A few years back I saw an anger management therapist, but I don't think it helped that much."

"But you did go, you recognised you had a problem."

"I knew I had a problem, I've always been hot headed, the act first ask questions later type of person, but I never thought I'd become the kind of man that would hit a woman. To this day I still don't know if that's who I am, or if it was just the situation that made me react that way."

"I've always known you were hot headed, but you never came across as the type of man who would go home and take it out on his wife."

"It was never like that, the first time it happened she just kept pushing me, she would say things that would make my blood boil and I reacted, sometimes it was as if she wanted me to do it, like she was goading me. Don't misunderstand me, I was completely and utterly to blame, I was the one who used my hands, and no woman should ever have to put up with that."

"Well to say I'm stunned would be one hell of an understatement, but it's in your past Boyd, it happened, you did the right thing by walking away, now it's time to leave it where it belongs, in the past. I am so glad you told me, but I still don't understand why you're telling me all this now."

"Because I need you to understand why I walked out on you yesterday, why I said those things earlier."

"Are you saying you're still that person?"

"No! Oh god no! At least I hope I'm not. No what I'm saying is…fuck I don't know how to say this."

"Thanks, but no thanks! Does that about sum it up?"

"What? No, that's not what I'm saying."

"Boyd…you looked at me with a look of disgust that I don't think I'll ever forget."

"It wasn't you I was disgusted with, it was myself. It shouldn't have happened, I shouldn't have let it happen."

"I never realised sex with me was such an abomination."

"No Grace, it isn't that, for goodness sake, can't you see what I'm trying to say?"

"No, quite honestly I can't."

"No matter what I feel for you, no matter how much I care about you, and I do, I _really_ do care about you, we can't be together, it can't happen."

"You made a mistake, yes it was a terrible mistake and it shouldn't have happened, but it did happen, you can't let it destroy any future chance of happiness you might have."

"I was a fucking monster, the worst kind of man imaginable."

"You knew what you did was wrong and you walked away, you saw an anger management therapist, it's in the past, let it stay there." As she spoke she reached out her hand and rested it on his arm, but he pulled his arm away hurriedly. "Why do you keep pushing me away?"

"Because pushing you away is a lot easier than pulling you close and hurting you. All the one night stands and the affairs meant nothing, it was easy to stay detached and walk away, but with you it's different."

"In what way?"

"I haven't felt about a woman the way I feel about you, not since Mary."

"But surely that's a good thing."

"No! Don't you see? If I could love her as much as I did and still hurt her, then there's a chance that I could hurt you, and I would never forgive myself if that happened."

"I am not going to sit and pretend that I could ever forgive you, or any man in fact, that used physical violence against me, but whether I take a chance on you or not is my decision."

"No it isn't, I don't trust myself Grace, you're too precious to me."

"You cannot let your past dictate your future, we get one shot at life Boyd don't waste it."

"I can't, I'm sorry, I just can't."

"Yesterday, when we kissed, did you feel anything?"

"You know damn well I did, I've spent months wanting nothing more than what happened yesterday."

"Then take a chance. I don't for one minute think you're the same man you were back then, you were young and stupid. If you hadn't learnt from your mistakes then I'd be running for the hills, but I believe you have learnt, and I also believe we could have something special together."

"But what about when we argue, when we shout and scream at each other like we did earlier?"

"Did you at any time during that row feel out of control?"

"No. All I could think about was pushing you away, not letting you get close to me."

"You're not that angry young man anymore Boyd."

"No I'm an angry old man instead."

Grace tenderly places her hand on his face and sits forward to look at him. "I don't know why your relationship with Mary turned out that way, or what made you react in that manner, but I am bloody sure it's not who you are now."

"You can't be sure of that, what if it's something in me. I wasn't drunk or drugged up when it happened, I was…" Before he could finish she kissed him.

"It's in the past Peter, let it stay there."

"What if…" She again silenced him with a kiss.

"You're drowning in what ifs, give yourself a chance. Give me a chance. Give _us_ a chance."

"But…"

"Enough! I trust you, it's time to trust yourself." She kissed him again, pulling him back on the sofa with her.

This time he kissed her back, he moved his mouth to her ear. "Grace?"

"What?"

"I'm sorry, for behaving like an idiot."

"It's forgotten."

"Grace?"

"What?" She said a little irritated.

"Fuck me?" He drew back from her and winked, before kissing her again.

_Fin _


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